Software Acquirer Bent Spoon IPO Priced at $29, Raising $1.68 Billion
Taylor Wilson
Italian software acquirer Bending Spoons priced its U.S. IPO at $29 a share, raising $1.68 billion above the top of its marketed range; the deal values the company at roughly $18.4 billion, a 27% premium to its last private round — and the market will now test whether that markup holds.
What does this company actually do?
Bending Spoons was founded in Italy in 2013. The name comes from a scene in the sci-fi film *The Matrix*.
Its model resembles private equity: it buys struggling subscription-software apps, cuts headcount, then hands operations to its own engineering team.
The portfolio includes video platform Vimeo, file-transfer service WeTransfer, note-taking app Evernote, AI photo editor Remini, and — announced in 2025 — internet pioneer brand AOL, acquired from Yahoo.
How was the IPO priced, and where does the money go?
The offering priced at $29 per share, above the $26–$28 marketed range, with 57.97 million shares sold for a total raise of roughly $1.68 billion.
Of that, the company itself issued 34.4 million shares (primary capital); shareholders — including Baillie Gifford — sold 23.57 million shares (secondary).
This means → about 40% of the offering is existing holders cashing out, not fresh capital flowing into the business.
An $18.4 billion valuation — how much above the last round?
Post-offering market cap lands at roughly $18.4 billion, up about 27% from the ~$14.5 billion implied by the 2025 private round.
That prior round was not straightforward: it comprised $270 million in primary capital, $440 million in secondary, and $2.8 billion in debt financing (per PitchBook).
In plain terms = only $270 million of that round was new money into the company; the rest was debt and secondary trading. The IPO prices at a 27% premium on top of that — the market needs earnings to back it up.
Can the financials support the price?
Q1 2026: net income of $27.5 million on revenue of $601 million — versus a net loss of $112 million on just $259 million in the year-ago quarter. A swing to profit and revenue more than doubled.
Monthly active users rose from 111 million (Dec 2023) to 500 million (Mar 2026); monthly paying users grew from 3 million to 9 million over the same period.
This means → the user growth and profitability turnaround are real, but the core question remains: can an "acquire-and-cut" growth model sustain itself once the company is public and new targets become harder to find?
What should investors watch after the listing?
Shares are expected to begin trading Wednesday on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker "BSP", with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Allen & Co. as lead underwriters.
This reflects top-tier Wall Street backing — pricing above the range also signals strong institutional demand.
In plain terms = the short-term setup is solid: above-range pricing plus a turnaround story. The medium-term test is the acquisition pipeline and paid-user retention — whether this company can keep finding cheap targets and making them profitable will determine if the story holds.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.